Six Feet Under (Mad Love Duet Book 1)

by Whitney Barbetti

  “Because.” He shrugged, looking like a kid fresh out of college with no idea on what to do with his life. “I’m kind of a manager here.”

  I snorted. “Shit—like what you just said—might make a good fertilizer, but it still stinks.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I mean,” I stepped forward, “that you just fed me some bullshit. And while it might be good fertilizer for your lies, I can still sniff it out.” I tapped my glass to his. “When you can be honest with me, well,” I took a sip and then shrugged, “maybe I’ll be honest with you.”

  I turned, going back toward the hallway and tried not to smile when I felt him just a few footsteps behind me. “It’s not fair for me to bring my work in here,” he continued from behind me. “Because I’m the most well-known, and I don’t want people to give me attention I don’t deserve.”

  I stopped abruptly enough that he bumped into me from behind and muttered a dozen apologies. “You don’t think you deserve attention?”

  “I don’t think I deserve attention that I haven’t earned. My presence here,” he motioned a hand to the space, “might translate into obligatory praise.” He shuffled his worn Converse on the floor. “And, well, there are a lot of talented people here. I don’t want to take the attention away from that, even if I thought my work was good enough to deserve it.”

  I contemplated what he was saying for a moment, understanding then that he, deep down, was good. Thoughtful, focused on the important shit. Our reasons for not sharing our work may have been different, but his—I could understand.

  “That’s noble,” I commented, turning down one aisle to look at the art I’d seen there just a week before.

  “It’s not. It’s honest.” He stood beside me in front of an unoccupied little pseudo-cubicle. “There’s space here for you.” When I shook my head, he said, “I was honest with you. Your turn.” He nudged me with his shoulder like the way one might do with a friend. But he and I weren’t friends. We were … acquaintances, if anything.

  But I’d said I’d tell him, so I did. “I don’t think my art belongs here.” Just the words my art passing my lips made me want to grimace.

  “What, because it’s too good?”

  I gave him a withering look. “No. I might be a narcissist, but that is the furthest from my mind.” I turned to the booth beside the empty one. “Like look at that.” There were clouds exiting the right side of the frame, with a brief relief of blue sky in the middle as new clouds formed from the left side. But the incoming clouds, as I analyzed them, were darker, angrier. “It’s simple, but it’s not. There are so many ways to interpret it.”

  “How do you interpret it?”

  I looked sideways at him. “I think that’s personal.” It reminded me of the way storms could come, and just as soon as you could take that brief intake of breath, of relief, another storm would soon follow. There was no space to get comfortable. I could relate to that.

  “Okay, so what about this one then?”

  “This tells a story. Without using a single word, it tells a story. And that story looks different to anyone who looks at it.” I paused. “The things I paint, well, I paint for me. Emotions. I feel them, I paint them, and then they’re gone.” I turned to Jacob. “And I’ve then lost my connection to the painting, so how can I display any work that I don’t feel anything for?”

  He ran his tongue over his teeth, his lips so thin that I could see the movement plainly under his skin. “I get that. So, do you only paint when you’re feeling a certain way?”

  “Yes.” I briefly debated how much I wanted to say. “Anger, mostly.”

  Hurt, too, the voice added. But it was easier to tell someone of your anger than of your hurt, so I didn’t vocalize that one.

  “What about when you’re happy?”

  I scrunched my eyebrows together.

  “You know.” He put the tips of his forefingers at either side of his mouth and lifted the corners into a smile. “Do this. You do do this on occasion, right?”

  “Believe it or not, I do.”

  Just not much since Six left.

  “I don’t paint when I’m feeling anything other than anger,” I said.

  Or hurt.

  Damn, the voices were more annoying than usual.

  “Why?”

  How far did this honest promise have to stretch? Should I open my mouth, tell him my madness drove me into anger and that my anger drove me into drugs, or alcohol, or other shenanigans that I actively tried to avoid now? I scratched my wrist. “The only time I need an outlet is when I’m angry. When I’m happy, I don’t need to expel it from myself.”

  “What if painting while you’re something other than angry can produce something you’re proud of, something that you want to keep looking at—something you want to share?”

  I chewed on my lip thoughtfully.

  “You sound like a damn therapist.”

  He chuckled. “That’s my dad. Not me.”

  I squinted at him. “The counseling office.” I pointed above us. “You live above it.”

  His smile turned sheepish. “With my folks. Yeah.”

  “So, you’re the manager,” I held up air quotes around the word. “And your folks…”

  “My dad, it was his idea.” Jacob moved ahead of me, but not fast enough for me to think he was trying to get away from me.

  “I mean, that’s cool.” I caught up to him. “Is he a curator of fine art?”

  Jacob snorted. “I don’t think he really understands art—not the same way I do, at least. He and I, we have a complicated relationship. But it’s been better since he developed this.” He cast an arm ahead of us. “This was really his idea. To give me something productive.” Jacob dragged what little he had of his fingernails over his face, over the beard he was trying to grow but was failing miserably at.

  “He must care about you a lot, to give you this.”

  “He cares about his patients.” He looked sideways at me. “A lot of them are here.”

  “Oh?” I started scrutinizing faces a bit more. “Like who?”

  “He doesn’t tell me. But I know he sends them here. They tell me, much to his chagrin.” He stopped at another empty booth and his hand covered the front pocket of his jacket, much like mine did when I was thinking about having a smoke. “Wanna go outside, have a cigarette?”

  “Sure.” He led the way, clapping people on the back as he exited, giving hugs to those who stopped in front of him, all but demanding his attention for a moment. When we were finally outside, he took a deep breath and laughed a little as he pulled out his packet of smokes.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “They all love me in there.” He shook his head, as if the idea was hilarious, and put a cigarette between his teeth, offering me one as he lit it with his other hand.

  “You’re Moses. Parting the Red Sea.”

  “I’m Jacob. Meth addict.”

  It was what I’d suspected. One of my earlier dealers had tried pushing it on me, but the way he’d picked at his skin had stopped me from ever trying it. “Still using?”

  “Not if I can help it,” he said sardonically. “It ruined my life.” He blew smoke out the side of his mouth and pointed at me. “What about you?”

  “Mostly coke. Some pills here and there. Alcohol.”

  “So what’s with the lines on your arms?”

  Instinctively, I pulled my sleeves down even though I knew they were already covering my skin. He must’ve seen them one of the other times I was here. I lit my own cigarette and debated on what to tell him. He was being honest with me, and I tried to decide how much I could be honest with him, without it backfiring.

  “Sometimes pain is more than just a feeling. It’s a thing that lives in me. I’m wound so tight that I’m suffocating.” I flicked the ash. “It’s better to hurt than to be numb.”

  “Is it?” He smoked and looked upwards, toward the night sky, as he contemplated my words. “Isn’t there re
lief in feeling nothing at all?”

  “Not when it’s all you know. It’s easy, when I’m high, to forget that I’m a mortal. This,” I dragged the filter end of the cigarette over my wrist, “reminds me that I can die.”

  “That’s not morbid.”

  “It is morbid,” I corrected him, even though I knew he was being sarcastic. “Better to be reminded, especially when I’m convinced I’m invincible. But that’s honest.” I shrugged. “You asked.”

  “I did.” He touched his face briefly. “I wish I could say these scars were to remind myself that I could die, but to be honest—I don’t remember causing them. I wasn’t all there.” He tapped on his head. “I think not remembering will haunt me forever. Not remembering what I did.” He laughed shortly. “I burned a lot of bridges when I was actively using. And I can’t even remember why.”

  “Probably best for you to stay away from it then.”

  “That’s why there’s no drinking, no drugs, here. It’s a place to celebrate creation.” He looked up at the building I knew he lived in. There was a faint light against a frosted window. “Dad’s idea. It’s worked. Keeps me busy, off the streets.”

  I thought of Six, and his push to give me distractions; hobbies. He wanted me to stay busy too, so I wouldn’t get myself into trouble. And just thinking about him, when my purpose in coming here was to stop thinking, made my heart pinch, my throat tighten. “Did you live on the streets?” I asked, after clearing my throat.

  “For a time, yeah.” He took a deep inhale and I watched the white on his cigarette fly up toward the filter. “My parents, kicked me out. Didn’t want to deal with me. Couldn’t blame them and, after all, it was probably what got me clean. What about you? Ever been homeless?”

  “Not unless I wanted to be, and even then it was brief. My mom, we don’t get along, haven’t talked in a year now, but she paid my rent for a while.”

  “She must really love you,” he said, throwing back what I’d said to him.

  “Maybe,” I said, deciding not to expand on that with him, not tonight. It wasn’t the time to air my mother’s and my bullshit relationship. It was different than Jacob’s and his dad’s, that was for sure. Because I couldn’t live with Lala, and she’d only ever shown brief interest in helping me. Shrinks and hospitals and things that ultimately only ever put a bandage on my myriad of issues; never solving, never really helping.

  “I should get going,” I said. “It’s Brooke’s first night home from the hospital. She might need help.” It wasn’t the real reason I wanted to leave. But I’d given Jacob enough about my life for the night, and suddenly I was tired, spent, filled so much with missing Six that I wasn’t sure how I had room for anything else.

  “Okay. Well, if you ever change your mind about, you know, putting up your art around here, just let me know.”

  “Yup, will do.” But I wouldn’t.

  23

  November 2003

  Brooke got a job. I thought it was too soon, too early. But what the hell did I know anyway? Not a whole lot, judging by the fear that lit through me when she’d told me about the job, and then casually asked if I could help her, if Norah needed it.

  The day she’d brought it up, her face had been completely illuminated. Like a spark that had been dormant in her was suddenly lit again. And I’d stammered through a no, before watching that light fade a little from her face. This was important to her. She wanted to do this, to feel like she could provide for herself and for Norah. And really, wasn’t that the end goal here? When I’d invited Brooke to move in with me, I’d done it with the idea that eventually she’d be out. And she couldn’t do that without some kind of financial support.

  So, I told her I would. And every Tuesday through Saturday morning, Brooke was out the door around the time I was just getting ready for bed—shortly after midnight. She’d gotten a job at a bakery nearby, a place that her mom had found for her when she’d visited town a couple weeks before. And off Brooke went, from one in the morning until eight or nine, for weeks.

  Norah was only a few weeks old, but she was mostly sleeping through the night, apart from one short bottle feed around four in the morning. Except for once in a while, as Brooke had warned me about when she’d asked for my help with Norah, she woke again at eight for another bottle.

  And each time I heard that rousing cry, like a little lamb trying to be a lion, I hurried to Brooke’s room to take care of her. I couldn’t explain my attachment to Norah. She wasn’t mine. If I was being honest, apart from sleeping and eating, she didn’t have a whole lot of personality yet. But there was something that warmed me, every time I held her with a bottle pressed against her little rosebud lips. The way her dark eyes looked up me, how her fingers locked around my pinky, not letting go even after she fell asleep during each middle of the night feeding. She was so small, so helpless, and even though it was like holding the most breakable piece of china when I held her, I looked forward to it each time I did.

  When Norah was seven weeks old, and Brooke stood in the doorway of her bedroom after a morning shift, flour up to her elbows, I knew. The look on Brooke’s face was a mixture of regret and excitement—a hard one to pull off, but she managed it with the lightness in her eyes but the half frown of her lips. “I got a place.”

  Norah was still in my arms after her eight in the morning feeding. She was sleeping soundly, had been for the last thirty minutes. But I knew that my opportunities to hold her were growing fewer and fewer every day, so I held her while she slept, listening to small bursts of air leaving her lips here and there and her little whistle snoring here and there.

  I didn’t want to let her go, even as Brooke walked around the bed toward me to take her.

  “You’re covered in flour.”

  Brooke paused and looked at me peculiarly. “Okay. Well, I’ll just be right back then.”

  I didn’t like how she said it, like she expected I might walk out the door with her baby, sending her running after me like a bad tv movie. I wasn’t delusional enough to believe Norah was mine, and even less delusional that I could possibly and properly care for a baby. But the idea of Norah not being here was something I hadn’t expected so soon.

  When Brooke returned, moments later with red arms raw from scrubbing, she reached her arms out again for her child and, reluctantly, I handed her over. “What about mornings? Who’s going to watch her?”

  “My mom is moving here, at least for a bit.” She looked a bit perturbed by the idea, which made me feel even more upset. Was I not to be trusted with her baby?

  “I could watch her,” I said before I could stop my tongue from forming the words. “I mean, you could bring her here on your way to work.”

  Was it just my imagination, or did Brooke hold Norah closer to her chest? “That’s okay. My mom is looking forward to grammie time. She’ll take care of her.”

  I wanted to convince myself it wasn’t a slight toward me. I wanted that, really badly. But she’d pulled her baby from my arms just after delivering the news, and it felt like more than just a convenience thing. I scratched my wrists, tried to think about what to say and how to say it.

  “When’s your mom going to be here? I can watch her until then.”

  “Next week.” Brooke turned her back to me as she buckled Norah into her car seat. “But it’s slow at the bakery with Thanksgiving over, so I’m taking time off to move in and get adjusted to the new commute.”

  This wasn’t a dig, I tried to tell myself. She wasn’t taking her daughter from me because of me, because I was lacking in some way.

  But I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it. Because Brooke was calmly, cautiously, packing up her things without looking me in the eyes. “So that’s it?” I asked.

  She paused, her back still to me, but I saw the tightening of the muscles across her shoulders before she slowing turned around. “Thanks, for everything. You’ve helped out a lot.”

  “So what’s the rush?” My leg bounced and I stilled it. There
was an energy lit within me, despite having been up all night. And I knew it was because Norah and Brooke were about to walk out of my life and leave me alone, without even Six there to distract me.

  “It’s been a while now, right? Six months?”

  “Sure.” I stuffed my hands into my pajama pant pockets to keep their movements out of view. My entire body was vibrating, because I realized I was about to watch her walk out the door with Norah, and I hadn’t adequately thought about how this would go. I hadn’t thought long term. I’d had a purpose with Brooke and Norah here, and soon I’d have…nothing.

  “I’m getting the keys this afternoon, and my mom got me a rental car to help me bring everything over, so I’ll be out of your hair soon enough.”

  I wanted to tell her she wasn’t in my hair, but the truth was that Norah was the one who wasn’t in my hair. That tiny little mewling human had shifted something in me. Brooke, well, I was starting to get used to her, because I knew she was a package deal with Norah. But it was Norah that I’d come to want.

  So, I backed off. I didn’t offer to help her carry stuff to the car. But when she brought Norah out and placed her car seat beside the bassinet in the back seat, I stood there and kept an eye on her. Brooke hadn’t asked me to, but I would’ve done it either way.

  What did it say about the situation that Brooke wanted her baby out of the house before the furniture?

  When Brooke had loaded the last thing, she turned to me, and a small smile turned her lips. Her arms widened imperceptively, but enough that I noticed. Enough that I turned around, my own arms wrapped around my middle, and returned to the house.

  As I locked the deadbolt, I saw Brooke’s key on the counter, beside Henry’s former home.

  And then, unwilling to spend another minute alone in Six’s house, I packed my bags and left too.

  24

  Christmas Eve 2003

  I told myself one drink would numb me. One, small glass.

  But then one small glass turned into two, and by the time the fifth glass was filled and poured down my throat, I stopped counting.